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User: maxwell+demon

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Comments · 12,279

  1. Re:Term-papers made me think coherently! make it s on Teachers Know If You've Been E-Reading · · Score: 1

    Do you also use lots of bold in your essays? Because that's a big part of what makes your post look "apk-ish".

  2. Re:Disconcerting? on Teachers Know If You've Been E-Reading · · Score: 1

    The danger here is substituting the easy to measure metric "Pages Read" for the much tougher "Material Understood".

    Right! The only data gained here is "time spent reading what I told this person to read." What BS.

    Wrong. The actual data gained is "time spent making the ebook reader display what I told this person to read".

  3. Re:Disconcerting? on Teachers Know If You've Been E-Reading · · Score: 1

    If you have already trouble just because a few Greek letters appear in the formulas, well, maybe this is not the right subject for you. Here's a hint: Nobody cares about the original meaning of the letter. All that matters is that you can easily recognize it after you've seen it a few times, and that it's not too hard to write it down.

    Also, there are standard notations which just involve Greek letters, and your instructor would do you a disservice if he replaced those by Latin letters, just as an English teacher who decided that the difference between "there", "their" and "they're" is too hard for the students and would consistently use "there" for all of those in his teaching would do his students a disservice.

  4. Re:Disconcerting? on Teachers Know If You've Been E-Reading · · Score: 1

    If he has nothing to do, he is supposed to be busy reading Slashdot! ;-)

  5. Re:Disconcerting? on Teachers Know If You've Been E-Reading · · Score: 1

    Well, maybe his thoughts were like this:

    Hmmm ... that would be quite great ... but it's very unusual. I wonder if the administration would accept that ... there are surely some rules this violates ... sure, the professor probably has checked the rules, but who tells me that he didn't overlook something ... and if there's something wrong with it, I ultimately failed the class, just because of some stupid rule hardly anyone knows about. No, I'm not going to take that risk.

  6. Re:Great time to switch those computers to Ubuntu on Set Your Watches For the End of Windows XP · · Score: 1

    There will still be desktop operating systems. They just might not be from Microsoft.

  7. Re:Is this the point in time.. on Set Your Watches For the End of Windows XP · · Score: 1

    For Linux, there are also people paid for it (by Red Hat, Canonical, etc.). However unlike Windows, it's not a single company doing the checks but many, and in addition volunteers. Therefore the probability of some found problem being just swept under the rug instead of fixed is much lower.

  8. Re:Stop drinking the Kool Aid on Why You Should Worry About the Future of Chromebooks · · Score: 1

    Yeah, the police will be really happy to learn about every thriller movie that is being cut ... ;-)

    If they ever added such a feature, I'd bet it would be forcefully deactivated in short time.

  9. Re:The rules are simple. on Build a Secret Compartment, Go To Jail · · Score: 1

    You all got it wrong: It's not the number of employees that counts. It's the number of Dollars.

  10. Re:War on drugs on Build a Secret Compartment, Go To Jail · · Score: 1

    People have a problem with not knowing the difference between "legal" and "good."

    Then make it illegal to not know the difference. :-)

  11. Re:The Answer To This Nonsense... on Build a Secret Compartment, Go To Jail · · Score: 1

    How is sending the money and then not getting the product any different from being "robbed"?

    Nobody puts a gun at your head, and you're not in danger of being killed.

  12. Re:I propose a new sandwich ... on Brown vs. Startup Over a Sandwich · · Score: 2

    suedo sue me a sandwich

    $ man suedo

    SYNOPSIS

    Obtain privileges by using a court

    INVOCATION

    Unfortunately by telling you how to invoke this command we would open ourselves as target. Please contact your lawyer for more information.

    SEE ALSO

    court(8), lawyer(8)

  13. Winning strategy on The Underhanded C Contest Is Back · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The winning entry will be one which doesn't only do the evil task asked for, but at the same time, in a way that the contest runners won't notice it, also manipulates the contest database in order to put itself as the winner. ;-)

  14. Re:Yeah but... SSD? on Ask Slashdot: Enterprise Bitcoin Mining For Go-Green Initiatives? · · Score: 1

    With a "comparatively" shorter life span why not run it 42/7?

    Unfortunately the day is 18h too short for that. ;-)

  15. Re:Oil on World's Most Powerful Private Supercomputer Will Hunt Oil and Gas · · Score: 1

    But no rifle, bow or other hunting weapon, no dogs, nor anything else usually needed for hunting.

    Or in short: Whoosh.

  16. Re:10 Year Old Child Prior Art on No "Ungoogleable" In Swedish Lexicon, Thanks to Google · · Score: 1

    The word "google" as invented by a mathematician's cild, as a response to what the number 1 with a 100 zeros after it should be called.

    Wrong. The word that child invented was "googol".
    Yes, "Google" is derived from "googol". But it is not exactly the same word.

  17. Re:Natural result of government power over somethi on No "Ungoogleable" In Swedish Lexicon, Thanks to Google · · Score: 1

    I don't know about Sweden, but AFAIK in Germany you are only required to adhere to the official language rules if you are either a teacher for German language in a public school, or if you are a government employee writing an official document. In any other situation you can see it as just a recommendation (at least as far as the law is concerned). For example, after the spelling reform, some German newspapers decided to continue using the old spelling, and some others made their own modifications of the new official rules for their house style.

  18. Re:Normally I wouldn't own my own genes... on You Don't 'Own' Your Own Genes · · Score: 4, Funny

    That only covers half of your genetic material because there's no grandmother clause.

  19. Re:Density on Graphene Aerogel Takes World's Lightest Material Crown · · Score: 1

    Dark matter? <ducks>

  20. Re:Enter the new airship age ... on Graphene Aerogel Takes World's Lightest Material Crown · · Score: 1

    Well, then why didn't the Cargolifter succeed?

  21. Re:I'd believe it if you added the word "solid" on Graphene Aerogel Takes World's Lightest Material Crown · · Score: 1

    And helium. And a lot of other gasses. The aerogel only stays puffed up because it's got air in it. If you're going to be fair you have to count that as part of the density.

    FTFS: "the ultra-light aerogel has a density of just 0.16 mg/cm3, which is lower than that of helium and just twice that of hydrogen."

  22. Re:TAX THIS on Massachusetts May Try To Tax the Cloud · · Score: 1

    Thank you for the hint. Investigations against you because of tax evasion have been started.

    Sincerely, your tax office. :-)

  23. Re:Ugh, something to bang my head to on a Monday on Massachusetts May Try To Tax the Cloud · · Score: 1

    Yo dawg, I heard you like taxes, so we put a tax on your tax so you can pay while you pay.

  24. Re:If it discourages businesses from using the clo on Massachusetts May Try To Tax the Cloud · · Score: 1

    It will just encourage businesses to use a cloud located elsewhere.

  25. Re:Damn.. on Massachusetts May Try To Tax the Cloud · · Score: 1

    If all transactions are electronic, why would they only take 3%? Why not 13%? Why not 30%?

    Because at some point it would get more profitable to keep your money out of the country. Indeed, for multinational companies, probably even 3% would be sufficient for that.

    Note that thanks to the internet, it would not be a problem to transfer money from one account on the Cayman Islands to another one there.